Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast

Episode 157 | The Key to Turning The Past From Negativity to Gratitude and Hope

• Travis Rosinger and Dawn Rosinger

Share episode

Have you ever met someone who has gone through some really horrible things but for some reason their outlook on life is really positive? Have you ever talked to someone who made a bad decision in their past, but they seem to put a very logical, positive spin on it regardless of that bad decision? Then they go on to constantly talk about how their life could be in a lot worse place than it is right now. How do they do it? How do these people take their negative experiences and decisions and are filled with gratitude for their present situation and future? Wouldn't it be great to figure out how to have that kind of an attitude about a disappointing past you can't change and especially bring that into your marriage?

Join hosts Travis and Dawn Rosinger as they look at a relatively unknown concept, a practice of rewriting a more correct narrative of your past. This discipline of looking through your life and marriage with a lens that focuses on how things could be a whole lot worse might actually make you feel much better about the things you can't really change. It might even change the way you view your marriage, forever! This is a must listen to episode!

Travis and Dawn Rosinger are the Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast Hosts and Authors of the books, Verbalosity - 7 Steps to a Verbally Generous and More Fulfilling Marriage and their newest book, Gripping -  What Matters Most | A Life and Relationships That Hold on to You

For more information about Travis and Dawn Rosinger go to Loving The Fight

Travis Rosinger:

Hey everyone, we want to welcome you to the loving the fight marriage podcast. Guess what? I'm not alone. I'm here with you, guys, but I'm also here with my friend, my lover, my world adventurer, my pickleball partner and also my scooter buddy, my wife of 31 years, don Rosinger.

Dawn Rosinger:

Wow, that is quite the introduction, travis. I don't even know what to say to that, because I was going to think of some things that I could say back and like wait, you just said my favorite things about the scooter and the pickleball and but I guess you are my bed buddy, right, we share a bed. We share a home, we have kids together and grandkids, so, just honestly, my ultimate best friend. So thank you for that great introduction. Marriage is a blessing.

Travis Rosinger:

It is, but you're my co-host. I don't even know if I said that part, but that's the whole point. We're here together and, guys, we are just pumped to hang out with you. Now, when you said you were my bed buddy, I thought of bed bugs. I was like, wait, am I like a bed bug? But I know that's not what you meant. But anyway, we are just pumped to be able to talk about life, about Jesus, about relationships, especially marriage. But we want to do our best to encourage all of you that are listening out there to keep loving the fight. That's why we have that name for this podcast.

Dawn Rosinger:

It's funny this last week I was talking to a gentleman. He asked me why we do podcasts or why we even, you know, have loving the fight, and I just got to tell him our story. We started out in ministry quite a few years ago and we went through, talked to a lot of different couples and did a lot of counseling pyramidal counseling and we realized that there's a lot of marriages that are struggling. But at that point, when people would come to us, they were at a point where, man, they were just in really hard shape and so we decided at that point we want to do marital hygiene, we want to be encouragers, we want to help on the front end before couples get to a point where they're almost at the divorce. They're just frustrated with each other and a lot of the hope is gone. So that's the way we do it Loving the fight.

Dawn Rosinger:

This podcast because we just want to encourage people in their marriage, and there's so many things throughout our day, throughout our life, throughout our week that just just points us back to marriage. So let's talk about it and hopefully that's what we are to you all that listening to us faithfully.

Travis Rosinger:

Totally agree. And is there such a thing as marital hygiene? I mean, it sounds like we're pulling out our marriage license and we're like brushing it with the toothbrush and toothpaste or spraying some deodorant on it or something. But I get what you mean. It's relational hygiene, it's being proactive and wanting to help give couples tools to help them right now in their marriage and the trenches, when they're duking it out with evil and and fighting to stay connected and love in a world that will do everything to pull apart A couple who wants to have a Jesus centered relationship.

Dawn Rosinger:

I think the marital hygiene came from. You know I worked in the dental field for quite a few years with an amazing dentist, dr DeYoung. He's phenomenal. But that's where I got the word hygiene from the marital hygiene, because you have to brush your teeth and floss and take care of your gums, and you know oral hygiene is so important. Otherwise what happens? You lose your teeth or your gums.

Dawn Rosinger:

get you know, you get a disease in your gums, like you have to have good oral hygiene, and so I'm like, well, that's the perfect word, we have to have good marital hygiene, because what will happen? Honestly, our marriages will fall apart. I mean, we won't lose our teeth, but our marriages will completely fall apart.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, I love what you said. I think you nailed it. We you said diseases in your, like gums or your teeth. We don't want a disease in our marriage, like we want our marriage to be healthy. We want your marriage those of you that are listening to be healthy. All right, well, we want to dive right in, Don, do you want to fill everybody in on something that happened to us a few years back? That was kind of monumental, yeah, but absolutely In our lives.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yep, we are pastors and we talk about that and we've lived in a couple of states over the last 27 years, met some incredible people, great memories. Well, there was one particular move that we did. That was we kind of questioned a little bit. You see, one day, out of the blue, we got a call from a gentleman in a church and he said hey, we don't have a senior pastor right now. Would you come and possibly be our senior pastor? Now, this particular church that we were going you know that called us was in a smaller town in Iowa. It was a church that we were previously youth pastors at, like 10 years earlier, and they called and man, I remember the first, when you started telling me about this, travis, I was like, hmm, I don't know if we should go back there, like, nah, I mean, it was a great season.

Travis Rosinger:

The people we loved them.

Dawn Rosinger:

we were youth pastors then. But should we go back? Well, we went to go visit in this church and we went a couple of times and I know at that point our kids were like middle school age and my son was just about to go to high school and they wanted to go back. They were right away. They're like absolutely we need to go back and I was super hesitant.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, they were begging. In fact, at one point they were crying. They were like we need to go there. We need to go there.

Dawn Rosinger:

And it was so cool that they were doing that because, honestly, that's when I stopped them Like, oh God, you must be, you know, doing something in our own kids. Maybe I should listen and be open to this. Well, we ended up deciding okay, yep, this is where we're supposed to go talk to the board. We got voted in 100% in this town and we're like, okay, we're gonna go. Well, we moved to this town Again, a smaller farming community. We love the people. But then our friends from Minneapolis would come to visit us and they asked us they're like what are you guys doing here?

Travis Rosinger:

Why did you?

Dawn Rosinger:

come back to this smaller town, like don't you realize? Like you're kind of going backwards in your career and your life and we're like we didn't even think about it in those terms.

Travis Rosinger:

Not at all. Yeah, they were like you don't belong here and we had left a city of almost 4 million down to the city of 7,000. And they're like what are you guys thinking? This is not you and it just again, like you said, we didn't think about it in those terms. We were really feeling at least for sure I was and you were starting to, and our kids definitely were feeling called to that city, to that church.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, absolutely. And we knew that we were supposed to go and be a part of this community and be a part of this church. And we went there, but again, so many people were questioning the decision that we made, even though we felt like God was saying no, this is the place you're supposed to go right now. Well, we went there and, honestly, it was one of the best experiences of our life.

Travis Rosinger:

We can trace back.

Dawn Rosinger:

If you go back and you connect the dots backwards, we can trace back all the way to like our kids and the spouses that they chose. It all starts from that choice that we made, that little town and the friendships and the connections that we made and the things that we were doing in that town, and it's just incredible to see all the good and the ministry that happened there, the friendships that we built, the healthy church that it became. It was an amazing experience. So, even though we had all these people questioning us, overall it was a phenomenal decision and it is impacting us to this day.

Travis Rosinger:

To this day and like ripple effects, like you wouldn't believe. And, of course, we got like a hundred stories to go with what you just said, but we don't have time to share all of them. But, man, they are like a million God stories embedded within this. But if we hadn't made that decision then we might be in a different place, right?

Dawn Rosinger:

now, yeah, completely, and our kids wouldn't be married to the spouses that they have, and like everything came up to this point.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, so here? So many people around us were telling us that we made the wrong choice, but ultimately it ended up being the best possible choice.

Travis Rosinger:

I did yes For our family and really even for each one of us individually. And the reason why we're telling this story to you guys is because we have realized, as we've looked back, the way that we think about the past and especially this story is a good example is actually something that is found in psychology, but it really is a powerful tool, and it's called counterfactual thinking, and I gotta be honest, I heard Mark Batterson first talk about upward counterfactual thinking and downward counterfactual thinking and I was like what is he talking about?

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah fascinating concepts, really really cool, and it's this idea that so many of us every single one of us, you know, whether you're an individual or married, or have this huge family, I mean all of us look at our past and we write this narrative from the past that we cannot change. So what is counterfactual thinking? Well, it's imagining what life could have been if you had done something, or what it wouldn't have been if you didn't do something. And it's again putting a negative spin on the past from the present, or putting a positive spin on the past from the present. So a little bit more about specifically upward counterfactual thinking, of course, how it impacts marriages, but again, it's believing that if you had done something in the past, your present reality would be better.

Travis Rosinger:

Let me give you an example. Oh, if I had just gone to college, I would be making so much more money right now and we wouldn't be living in this small house. We'd be living in this big house. And, by the way, I'm not talking about me, I'm just giving an example. Somebody might say that that would be upward counterfactual thinking. In other words, they're thinking very negatively about their present condition and it's because they didn't do something good that they should have done a long time ago.

Dawn Rosinger:

I feel like that type of thinking would actually be really discouraging, because you're kind of regretting the decisions that you made at that point and you're like man, if we want to done this or it totally makes sense. So you're thinking of your past very negatively.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, you nailed it, don. It's all about regret, it's all about hopelessness. It can drive you to depression. It can really damage your marriage and your relationship. You see, it's looking back and believing that life would be better, man, if I had only done this and, by the way, I don't have a time machine, so I can't go back and fix it but it's that massive regret that you just talked about. Now, let's be honest, we all need a tiny little bit of that not much, but a tiny little bit of that inside of us. Why? Because we need to learn from our past. If we didn't do something, we should have done, man, learn from it. But don't practice upward counterfactual thinking in terms of regret and we'll explain why in a second. Because when you start to think about downward counterfactual thinking, it's like oh, that makes so much more sense.

Dawn Rosinger:

All right, so if you're a little confused, just hang with us, we're going to dig in to downward counterfactual thinking and this all really does relate to marriage and just how we think about our past decisions as a married couple, either positively or negatively.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, it's like a battery there's a positive and negative side, and it's really important to have those connected so you get the full circuit of electricity. But you got to do it in the right way when it comes to marriage and it comes to looking at your past. So what is downward counterfactual thinking? It's really believing that your life could always be worse off than it is right now. So let me give an example. Yeah, I should have gone to college 15 years ago, but even though that I didn't, it could be. My life right now could be way worse than it is. So I didn't go to college, but I took that job, the job that I currently have, and now I've gotten all these promotions. And, yeah, we don't have the bigger house, but our little house is paid off. And I met all these friends that we love and I wouldn't have met them if it wasn't for my job. You know, if I had just gone right into college.

Dawn Rosinger:

I feel like I have a really good example of this, travis. You know that I went to nursing school. I did all the pre-nursing classes, I was in the nursing program, becoming a registered nurse. I thought that was my dream, that was my goal, that was I supposed to do. But we were in the middle of like a church fast and I felt like God's like no, you need to step out of that program, you're not doing the right thing. And I was actually kind of bummed but I'm like, okay, I'm going to step out of this program, believe in that. God is telling me what to do. And then I got a different degree and now I'm a pastor. But honestly, I think that if I would have, I'm so glad and thankful that I made that decision then, even though it seemed like it was a negative decision, because it totally impacted my future now and it ended up being very positive.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and I remember back then you kind of at times feeling like a failure I did yes. I quit, you know, nursing school.

Dawn Rosinger:

I stepped out. Why did I do that?

Travis Rosinger:

But in reality, looking back now, it's like whoa, if you wouldn't have done that, you know your life would be a lot worse because you wouldn't have been so prepared. You know in the different education that you got to become a pastor Right when a lot of nurses were Such a good example.

Dawn Rosinger:

A lot of nurses work every weekend, I wouldn't have been able to be a part of the church like I have been for the last 27 years, something that I love and I know that I'm called to do. But it's kind of like connecting the dots again backwards because I didn't finish nursing school, got a degree a different degree and I became a pastor. Like my whole life looks different, so it actually was a positive decision.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, that's a great example, and here's why a downward, counterfactual thinking is so helpful and so needed in marriage. Because here's the deal the result is not the worst it could be, but it's having gratitude for why your present is better than it could have been. It's saying, oh man, yeah, it's not, maybe you know this way, but it's so much better than it could have been. It's so much better than the worst that it could have been. And so it's looking back and thinking life could be a lot worse. I'm so grateful for where I'm at right now.

Dawn Rosinger:

I know last week we came across an accident but we were running kind of behind when we left and I was like kind of bummed that we were running behind because here we are going to be late somewhere. But then when we came up across we saw this horrible accident.

Travis Rosinger:

Horrible accident.

Dawn Rosinger:

This car flipped over on its side, and so here I was frustrated that we were running late, but I'm like, honestly, the alternative at that point would have been we could have been in that accident. So those few moments, that decision of you know, maybe we were behind, actually was a positive thing because it helped us avoid possibly this horrible accident.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, it could have been worse off. Yeah, absolutely so. What this kind of healthy type of thinking does is it produces hope and confidence for your current reality. It produces gratitude and life. And, to be honest with you, these kinds of thoughts, a person that says I don't care how I've thought in the past, you know, if I've thought negatively about my past the person that says, no, I'm going to start to choose to think positively about my past, I'll learn from it. But I'm always going to say you know what? It could have been a lot worse. It could have been a lot worse. Those are the kinds of people that are more resilient studies shows.

Travis Rosinger:

Those are the kinds of people that do get better in life. They're the ones that don't give up. They're the ones like you know what it could have been a lot worse, I'm going to do better tomorrow. And they don't give up hope for their present reality. So why is this important in marriage? Well, because we have two choices in life and in our marriages. We can look back and be positive about our lives and think, hey, it could be a lot worse than it is right now and have lots of gratitude for where we're at as a married couple. Or we could look back and be negative about our lives right now and think, oh, if my husband had only done this or if my wife had only done this, then our lives would be so much better right now.

Travis Rosinger:

And what does that do? It leaves a couple that's married man with so much regret, disappointment, depression. What it does is it paints a bleak future and present for that couple and creates tons of constant conflict and friction. So downward, counterfactual thinking is good. It leaves us with hope and it helps us to go. Okay, god's still with us, god's still in our marriage. Yes, yesterday is one thing, but today, this moment, the present, and tomorrow, man. With God, all things are possible.

Dawn Rosinger:

Glenn Garrett in an article by Psychology Today, says there's benefits towards this thing called downward counterfactual thinking, and it goes on in this article. It says various studies have found that downward counterfactual thinking tends to be more associated with psychological health compared with upward counterfactual thinking. In cases in which downward counterfactual thinking leads to negative feelings, people are motivated to take productive actions, and when downward counterfactual thinking leads to positive emotions, people feel a degree of life satisfaction. So looking back is not all bad. That's according to that article and that makes so much sense. And looking back and maybe your choices that you thought were negative but actually they're positive and you're thinking positively about your past.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, that's the kind of person I wanna be. That's the kind of marriage that I want us to have. As I think about your past, on my past, and then how they've intertwined together as a married couple, I mean, listen to what this says. It says that they're motivated to take productive actions. I don't wanna beat you up about your past and I want you to beat me up about my past. We wanna get better. Yeah, absolutely. We wanna get better. And just having those positive emotions, man, that just makes our lives together so much more satisfying, fulfilling.

Dawn Rosinger:

And, honestly, if you're looking back negatively, I feel like at that point you might be blaming the other person for something negative that had happened. So if you could try to just switch our thinking and go okay, honestly, we made that decision and it may have not looked like a positive decision at that point, it could have been negative, but look, because of that, all the positive things that came out of it, and I feel like there's just so many examples and more. I think of this like a ton of examples.

Travis Rosinger:

Ton of examples. Yeah, so when we look to learn from the past, both from our mistakes and our successes, we're gonna have a greater wealth of knowledge and experience to face the future. But we wanna do it with the right lens. We wanna look at the past with that downward, counterfactual thinking. So, as followers of Jesus, we need to have a more positive bent and to not have that hopelessness or that regret about our past. Why? Because Jesus is in our lives, he's our savior, he's our Lord, he's the center of our marriage, or at least he should be. And so followers of Jesus have a very different mindset. We can look at past difficulties and trials and really draw strength from them. In Romans, chapter five, verse three, it says not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character hope.

Dawn Rosinger:

Wow, yep, that makes sense. That's awesome. I love that verse.

Travis Rosinger:

So our past has suffering in it, but ultimately it builds character and leads to hope. And that's the kind of view that we need to have.

Dawn Rosinger:

It definitely makes you a stronger person all around. Like funny, I actually think back to my past. You know, charles, I didn't have the most glamorous past. But I look at my past and I'm like but I'm the person I am today because of what happened in my past. The way that I think about people or care about people is just. I'm so different and now I can actually look back and go. I'm grateful for my past, even though it was difficult. I'm grateful for now who I became because of it.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, isn't that fascinating? And also you probably have a sense of it could have been a whole lot worse.

Travis Rosinger:

Yes, oh, my word, yeah, I mean think of all the people that we've met and Don, my past is really unique and was challenging at times. Although I'm so grateful for my family and my parents, it wasn't what I necessarily would have always picked right and your past man so different and so challenging. But how many people have we met along the way in 27 years, 28 years of ministry, have we met that had a way worse life Like really?

Dawn Rosinger:

bad lives. Yeah, we've heard some crazy stories.

Travis Rosinger:

So for you and I to look back and go okay, that was not good, but it could have always have been worse.

Dawn Rosinger:

Right yep.

Travis Rosinger:

So healthy, so helpful.

Dawn Rosinger:

We just want to give you a couple of key questions to look about when you think about your past and your life together with your spouse and, honestly, just some food for thought. So how will you choose to look back at the decisions you have made in your life and in your marriage? Or will you look at your life with thinking things could be much worse or things could be much better? Again, are you having that positive spin on your past or are you having that negative spin in your past? And, lastly, will you choose to have gratitude or regret? I know I don't want to live in a state of regret. I want to live in a state of gratitude. You're just a much healthier person, but you get to choose it. So when you look back at your past with your spouse, like, is it gratitude or is it regret?

Travis Rosinger:

Well, hey, on that note, we want to leave you with this passage of scripture that's so powerful Romans 15, 13. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace, as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, hey guys, we want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Loving the Fight Marriage Podcast.

Dawn Rosinger:

Remember, you can do it. You got this. Keep loving the fight. We'll see you next time claiming.